Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night…

The city of Minneapolis has a wonderful thing going where you can get a free tree for your boulevard. You just have to make a request before November and the following spring you will have a tree planted in front of your house, no money or labor from you required.

Many years ago, I requested one of these trees and subsequently had a pin oak tree planted on my boulevard. I don’t know if the city still does this, but back then it took care of watering the tree for the first summer. They must have had a schedule where the watering truck would go around and water the new trees.

They were very good at following the schedule and didn’t let pesky things like bad weather interfere. They could have taken the motto often associated with the U.S. Post Office and tweaked it to reflect their dedication to the tree-watering schedule: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays theses tree waterers from the swift completion of their rounds.”

I know this because one day there was quite the deluge outside. It was pouring so hard that a person would have been totally soaked in approximately 2 seconds. I was nice and dry indoors and while I watched the rain pouring down, a truck pulled up in front of my house. Soon the tree-waterer had the hose out and was diligently watering the boulevard tree. I was impressed with his dedication…and amazed at a system which would send someone out to water trees when it seemed the tree was already getting plenty of moisture by natural means. I’m sure the tree-waterer felt his job was redundant that day.

Tell us about something you’ve done or witnessed that turned out to be totally unnecessary.

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62 thoughts on “Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night…”

It’s not too significant but the situation is occurring as I type. We are going to replace the carpet in an office. The custodial staff will not give up the area until they vacuum the carpet which will soon be in the trash. Sorry for being first so frequently. Eastern time zone.

Funny story, ljb. Pardon me for offering a story that cuts the other way.

I used to return home from our Lake Superior cabin by driving a complicated route on back highways. There was a T intersection on that route, an obscure intersection where two obscure roads met. Whenever I go there and turned, I used my car’s turn signal. Nobody ever saw that. There were no cars in sight in any direction. I was not communicating my intentions to anyone since there wasn’t anyone there.

But I signaled. I did so because I’m a sloppy, inattentive person. Signaling one’s turns is good practice, if occasionally irrelevant. If I let myself turn without signaling, I’d be sure to do that again when a car was coming. A person like me needs every bit of help that good habits can provide.

Well, I know some people who signal their turn into the driveway from the alley. I don’t do that, because I don’t see why I should bother. So far it hasn’t messed up my ability to use the turn signal when I should.

I do make an exception on those rare occasions when I meet an oncoming car in the alley and that driver decides to get out of my way – by pulling into my driveway. I then indicate my desire to pull into the spot where they just pulled in.

I siginal to turn in our drive ‘tho it is the only direction one would turn off the country road…and it is doubtful anyone ever sees me nor cares. Turning the opposite direction would land me in a gully and forest…not an option.

I doubt my using my signal is a sign of virtue. In my case it is my acknowledgment that I’m lazy and foolish, so I don’t dare mess with a good habit like always signalling. People like me need to do things the right way without questioning it. Good habits are all that stands between me and chaos.

When Sandy has a bad day and is in and out of bed much of the day, she will make the bed as late as 8 p.m. including putting on the bedspread, which she takes off before we go to bed. After making the bed she showers and comes out an hour later fully dressed as if we were going out, only to switch back into her nightgown an hour later. She has several tricks like this, for one setting the table when we are going to eat on front of the tV, which we do not do often. . Bit it isn’t wasted because she enjoys making things look nice. Is she is having a bad day it makes her feel good to get fully dressed.

She is so much brighter mentally the last two days, more than she has been for several months. Wondering why that is. She has lots of pain at the two incisions but the Percocet takes care of it. Today maybe a pivotal day. She had a normal bowel movement yesterday. We will see what happens today. This is not supposed to be perfect. I have a controller to adjust it, but the “factory settings” are working so far it seems.
Remember that she did not have the surgery two weeks earlier because the Dr. got very ill with the patient before her. So Tuesday morning she was waiting in the prep room and she saw his head appear around the side of the door. He said, “I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”

It is made by Medtronics. They send a specially trained nurse down to help install it. She makes sure the patient can feel stimulation to make sure the crystals are placed properly. Then afterwards in recovery she showed me how to work it and we set up the initial settings, which are the recommended beginning point. Again they make sure she can feel it, Then we left it on those settings. If they need to be changed I put a plastic disk over the implant. The disk is wired to the controller. I can turn the stimulation up or down or I can change programs. I can call Medtronics for help any day from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. if I need help or advice.

In July, 1987 there was a massive rainstorm that dropped 7? 9? inches on us on a Thursday night. I don’t remember the amount of rain, but I know it was Thursday because at the time I was a member of the Eden Prairie City Band. Thursday was rehearsal night. We met at the Eden Prairie High School, which we discovered as the rainstorm progressed, leaked like a sieve. At one point the director opened the door to the outside to see what it was doing out there.

PJ you point to the next big area of development for environmental restoration. Early environmental reforms addressed “low hanging fruit” problem like industrial pipes spewing toxins into rivers. We are about to see a whole class of subtle changes that address things like sprinklers wasting water when it isn’t needed. Irrigation systems and wells will be sealed up to stop costly leaks. Farming practices are being altered with sophisticated computer analyses showing exactly how much fertilizer and herbicide is needed in very specific places.

Maybe you see a pattern here. There are powerful forces defending questionable practices like drawing water out of aquifers to grow crops in arid lands. We have a farming industry that is currently dependent on dangerous chemicals. Many small reforms in these processes might seriously reduce problems and make it possible to go on doing environmentally questionable things but reducing the costs of doing that.

I remember that storm, too. A college friend who had graduated before me was back in town for a wedding. A group was out to eat at a spot in Uptown. First we sat and watched it rain hard enough that we couldn’t see the other side of the street. Then the lights went out and the wait staff came through and said that all they could serve us were things like salads as the ovens were out. So, we ordered some appetizers that didn’t require heat…and 10 minutes later, still watching it pour rain hard enough that Hennepin looked like a slowly rising river, we were told everyone needed to leave. They were very sorry to send us out into the storm, but with no lights or power, it meant there was no HVAC system and so they had to ask everyone to vacate for health reasons (because being inside in an unventilated building where it was dry is apparently a larger health risk than being turned out into a midwestern tsunami).

Introducing efficiencies is a relatively easy way to reduce the damage we do to natural systems. Much harder is to reject technologies defended by politically potent groups. If you take a hard look at agricultural policies and technologies (to use one kind of example) there are tremendous gains to be made by reducing inefficient measures. By doing this we can treat our planet more gently without making politically difficult choices. To some extent, this amounts to kicking the can down the road. To some extent, this is a way to buy time for new technologies to emerge (like fusion as a source of power).

Even so, I take your point about the “recent election.” We can count on that man to do 180 degrees the wrong thing with most decisions.

We are in a winter storm watch, waiting for up to 9 more inches of snow between tomorrow night and Tuesday. All theses storms are totally unnecessary and mother nature can stop with all this redundancy already! Son and Dil are leaving tomorrow morning instead of Monday to outrun the storm

I was thinking about doing a blog on this. But it fits here.
I ordered an Ann Cleeves mystery from the Arlington Library. Very often tiny Arlington has books I want that Manakto does not, except I forgot about the request until about four weeks later when the book came from Chisago Lakes, where we lived 48 years ago, which came with one of those “Hurry Up and Read This book Because Other People Are Waiting” notes, which I understand and appreciate, but sometimes they make me want to rush through the book, especially when the book came from 110 miles away, although Ann Cleeves mysteries read very fast for me, and if I keep this sentence going any longer, I will sound like Faulkner, although I cannot in my wildest dreams write prose that dense and convoluted.
But here is a thing. The book was on the shelf of the North Mankato Library.I know. I went and looked, The North Mankato Library is 3/4 of a mile from the Mankato Library. I am not allowed to have the book from the North Mankato Library. Mankato and North Mankato are at war. They have been for years. The police and fire departments do cooperate. No other government agencies cooperate. My book came 110 miles. A book 3/4 of a mile away is forbidden to me.
So there Hemingway.

makes me think of the jerry rubin title
” steal this book”
i saw a ladie get arrested for ringing up cheap stuff and bagging expensive stuff at the self serve cash register
carry upc codes on a little piece of paper in your wallet and ring up a bottle of ketchup and bag up tenderloin tips

thanks pj happy new year to the trail and alll the baboons. as the rest of the world swings in the balance i know i can depend on the trail for solid clear thoughts on how life ought to be. thanks you all and best of 17 comin atcha

I know two sayings, “Bringing coals to Newcastle” and “Bringing vampires to Santorin”. I guess the Greek island of Santorin is noted for its vampires, hence the redundancy of bringing more to the island.

i often see the phrase repetitive and redundant.
i think that says it all.

in thinking abot things i have doent that havnt mattered i believe so far the entirity of my life qualiifes in reality. i wold like to fix that kind of like alfred nobel and the surprising story of the nobel peace prize

my vote this past election,
my vanity in trying to fix a bad hair day
i can say more. waht has been worthwhile is likely going to requre clarence the angel of its a wonderful life to show m in a trip to a world where i had never been born.

I would argue that something that is repetitive may not be redundant. If you have a newly planted tree, you should water it repetitively, because it will continue to need water on a regular basis. You don’t need to water it redundantly, though.

Sadly, painting the ceiling in Steve’s dining room at the cutest little bungalow in St. Paul turned out to be unnecessary. We did have a very nice day that day, though, so I suppose it wasn’t a total waste.

The person who was watering the tree that may have been grateful for the work, even though it wasn’t productive. Maybe it meant something to someone.

He may have been grateful for his job, but if it was me that was doing the watering that day, I would have been wondering why I had to be doing the watering that particular day. My speculation was just for that day, not for his long-term job satisfaction. Many jobs have moments where the worker wonders “Why do I have to do this seemingly unnecessary thing?” but it seemed to me that this incident was a particularly obvious (and amusing) example of those type of moments.

This will make more sense to those who know me “in real life”…I have been asked if I own a curling iron. I have been asked by friends if they could try using a curling iron on my hair. (I have used a curling iron precisely twice on my hair – both times before my hair got really curly. I burned by forehead one of those to times. Needless to say, I avoid them.) And then there are the occasions when my hair dresser kind of forgets what she is doing and uses a volumizer spray on my hair. Oy.

In the Department of Redundancy Department, today I watched a dozen or so episodes of Downton Abbey on channel 2 during a pledge drive. Sat through countless pitches to send in some membership dollars in order to get a working Downton Abbey pull bell. Ready to hang on your wall or display on the shelf to add a little Downton Abbey into your own home! Alos six elegant cork-backed coasters with the official Downton Abbey crest. Plus DVD’s with
13 hours of incredible bonus material!
As our Downton marathon continues!